Data Protection in the Cloud

August 9, 2016By Alexander Negrash

Share +

Periodically, we turn over control of the CenturyLink Cloud blog to members of our certified technology Ecosystem to share how they leverage our platform to enable customer success. This week’s guest author from the Cloud Marketplace Provider Program is Alexander Negrash, Director of Marketing , at CloudBerry Lab.

The evolution of cloud technology saw cloud storage as a great tool to offload on-premise storage economics into the cloud. Thanks to ever-increasing Internet bandwidth and declining storage prices, keeping backups in the cloud has become a viable alternative to traditional on-site data storage for small and medium sized businesses.

However, many companies often overlook key considerations when it comes to online backup:

Reliable Storage

When moving backup data off-site, a company should ensure the cloud storage service is reliable and cost-effective, yet high-performing.

Data Security

Security is a top concern when business data is taken to the cloud. A company's private data could be compromised if the solution lacks the right features.

Restore Capabilities

Backup data stored at a remote facility should always be set at a recoverable state, be accessible at any time, and allow point-in-time object-level restore.

Companies migrate to cloud platforms like CenturyLink Cloud, leaving behind their own IT-infrastructures with costly hardware and labor-intensive maintenance. While every company's needs vary, it is useful to articulate the potential areas for cost-savings that cloud computing can bring to an organization. The two biggest savings that are gained from a move to cloud computing come from economies of scale and a utility-based pricing model.

Below we will cover a few of the major points behind moving your business' data and backup to the cloud.

Business Data and Backup Types

Most likely, your business deals with various types of data: system settings on desktops, customer personal data, and financial documents are used differently, but still have to be protected and work harmoniously after recovery.

CBB Ultimate Edition keeps all data at-hand, since it is a universal backup tool, which supports all key features of data protection:

File-level backup to keep files and folders safe. It's best suited for the protection of work files and documents or the transfer of urgent data to newly-provisioned desktops and servers.

Image-based backup saves the entire content of the machine from OS files to user data. Images are used for full system recovery and infrastructure migration.

SQL backup deals with the database(DB); it is the most exacting part of the IT-structure. The server environment, database contents, and incremental changes are all backed up in order to be ready for disaster recovery and prevent failures caused by human intervention. CBB supports full protection of SQL server, allowing users to recover the entire DB or just a few separate tables.

A good backup strategy preserves data from software and hardware faults, physical threats, and human mistakes. The performance and reputation of a company depends on its ability to access data, and every minute of downtime can result in loss of annual revenue. CenturyLink Cloud replicates data among several zones to increase business continuity, so at least one copy of data will be available, even in case of a natural disaster.

Data Restoration and Disaster Recovery

A restoration strategy should be developed before it becomes necessary in order to keep the balance between time and money spent for recovery. In the case of a disaster, it can often take days or weeks of waiting before local hardware can be recovered, whereas CBB can start your images as virtual machines in a couple of clicks, thus allowing a business to:

Minimize recovery delays and continue production before the local hardware is even restored.

Avoid losing profit due to the unavailability of customer service.

Reduce recovery expenses following the “pay-as-you-go” scheme, where only utilized resources are charged.

Scale up automatically if the workflow grows, and scale down afterwards.

Note: With CloudBerry you can recover data without having a license.

It’s even possible to avoid a short-term downtime using the pilot light strategy. In cloud technologies, the pilot light is a ready-to-use copy of the machine with crucial business service. When the source server fails, the administrator starts the clone as a virtual machine and allows it to perform until onsite restoration is finished. This scenario helps to cut the costs while keeping the key business services highly available.

Data Security as a Top-Level Business Concern

Many enterprises are apprehensive about utilizing the cloud to house their data because of security, specifically data transfer and storage privacy.

CBB offers a number of tools to avoid data theft:

Data can be encrypted on the client side using one of the 18 algorithms available (included AES-256bit, one of the safest today).

CBB doesn’t hash the password on its side or in the cloud. Even if storage units are stolen from the cloud data center, it will be impossible to read anything without the key.

The only vulnerable thing is the password. Is it possible to hack it? In the table below you can see a number of possible passwords for each encryption algorithm.

It will take Tianhe-2 Supercomputer, the fastest computer today, 5.4183479e52 years to brute force an AES-256 password, which is more than the age of the Universe.

CloudBerry Lab has integrated their backup technology with the CenturyLink Platform via the CloudBerry Backup Blueprint. With CloudBerry Backup (CBB) as a data protection tool, you don't have to take the platform into consideration. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux and has both graphical and command-line interfaces. It’s even possible to use CBB on Windows Server Core – learn more in our blog post.

Summary

Cloud services dramatically simplify the huge task of managing and protecting enterprise data. When corporate data lives in the public cloud, many different tools can be deployed via automation to hedge against risk. Further, many of these tools do not require large upfront investments in licensing fees or infrastructure.

Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) are complex topics. But it all starts with analyzing your requirements, and evaluating different products that might fit the bill.

Using CloudBerry Backup and CenturyLink you can:

Backup and recover any data on all popular platforms.

Keep data private and secure from hijacking and loss.

Restore files and servers for free, even if you don’t have a license yet.

Recover server images as cloud virtual machines in a couple of clicks.

Benefit from our partnership by getting the best price offer: subscription-based storage in which you pay for only space used and a permanent license for CloudBerry Backup software to save on the maintenance budget.

Getting Started

Start with a free 15-day trial (per computer) from CloudBerry. All licenses come with this trial to allow you and your customers time to evaluate the product before buying a commercial license.

Designed for your business needs today and tomorrow, the CenturyLink Cloud is reliable, secure, robust, and global.

Migrate to the CenturyLink Platform with free on-boarding assistance and receive a matching spend credit based on your commitment for your initial period of platform use with us.

Thank you for your submission. A representative will be reaching out to you within 24 hours.

First Name

Last Name

Email

Phone Number

Company (optional)

Job Title (optional)

Comments (optional)

What type of support do you need?

We have expert agents ready to assist you,
whether you're using Cloud Application Manager or any one of
the services available on the CenturyLink Cloud platform.
Click below to be directed to the appropriate team.